Forgotten treasure

Melanie is home from overseas and finding all sorts of forgotten treasure in her stored boxes.

I sent her this to put on the back of a world quilt she was making. Wouldn't this make a great block-of-the-month project?

And this weta was to remind her of home. I don't know why I thought that was a good thing to remind her about but it was the first bit of machine embroidery I had ever done. I had made stylised flowers before but never anything from a drawing or photo. The bobbin is there to give an idea of the size.

I've been in Australia for my holidays. Mum and I went over to Brisbane to see the Queensland Ballet perform Romeo and Juliet. Then Mum went home and I carried on up to Townsville to visit my good friend Issy. Then down to Sydney to see Becky (my other daughter), just in time for the Sydney Craft and Quilt Show. I met Mollie Sparkles and Lisa Walton, both lovely people but then aren't all quilters lovely!

I came back with airplane germs so no work has been done on my project this holidays and the weekend looks like it's filling up. Here's a bit of it anyway.

No more new projects

I went to an interesting talk at the Auckland Quilt Guild yesterday. The speaker, Claire Inwood, makes dolls - one at a time. Did you hear that? She's a successful artist and makes one doll at a time. I'm sure there's a message in there.

So, no more messing around. I'm finishing some projects.

This is my "Keith" quilt. I've put all the strips together for my strip piecing (strip on the left) an d now I'm cutting them into thinner strips (on the right). I will reveal all in my next update.

Floor cushions

You know when someone finds out that you sew and gives you a whole load of non-quilty stuff and you're not sure what to do with it. Well, at our guild we turn them into cushions.

This is a floor cushion (about 90cm x 90cm) made from all donated stuff apart from a bit of velcro.

We were given bags of what looks like offcuts from making mattresses. We also had this horrible batting that I've been trying to use up.

I wanted to line the inner cushion with the batting so that it wasn't quite so lumpy. I cut a strip of fabric and sandwiched the batting between the strip and the cushion inner so that I could sew the batting and make a pocket to put the off-cuts into.

The cushion inner is now lined with batting and filled with lumpy bits.

I made the back of the cushion from large curtain samples using velcro as a closure.

The front was made from upholstery and curtain sample books.

These lovely terracotta/pink fabrics were offcuts from a professional seamstress (sewer/sewist, which one do you use?) I was going to make myself some cushions or a handbag but I've had them for over a year and it hasn't happened yet. Time to let someone else appreciate them. These cushions are going to a children's home.

This is my latest project. It is really exciting. Two of these sheds are mine and are destined to become backpacker cabins somewhere lovely.

A couple of summers ago I visited Suz (http://suz-allthegoodonesaretaken.blogspot.co.nz) and Monika (http://monika-quiltingjourney.blogspot.co.nz). They live a beautiful part of the country up north. I also met Miss Lottie (http://theslightlymadquiltlady.blogspot.co.nz) on that trip. Miss Lottie often posts about the joys of living in the country. I made a decision that holiday that this was the life I wanted and I've been working my way slowly towards it. I'm planning to run a small backpackers and campsite (well, one electric point for an RV) and also build a house, keep chickens, grow stuff and do a bit maths tutoring.
The cabins are being built by students at my school. It will take them all year as they learn the skill for each part of the job. So I've got until the end of the year to find a place to put them.

Fiddler crabs

I had to take these photos with the flash so the colour isn't right. I've tried to adjust it so that you get a good idea of the ugliness of my challenge fabric. Pretty garish! But somehow I saw fiddler crabs in that fabric!

I just need to put a binding on it.

I'm particularly pleased with my little crabs in the distance. I just cut out random oval blobs for the first three and painted legs on them. Then when I went around them in black, they came to life. The very distant ones are just painted and then quilted with a dark grey thread instead. I like this scribble outline technique. It suits my messy way of working!

Painting backgrounds

I've been painting again. This time it's a background for a challenge quilt for our guild. I have a really ugly fabric to go on top of this but I think it will look great when it's finished.

The texture on the brown bit was done by adding rock salt to the wet paint. I used pink Himalayan salt, a bit extravagant but that's all I had. I've saved it for the next project!
I used Epsom salts on the light blue bit below. The darker bit I achieved by running a sponge brush with paint and no water over the wrinkled fabric. I let that dry and then added a wash of lighter blue over the top.  I wonder what a large piece would look like using that method, or adding a wash of a different colour.  Hmmm, more experiments needed.

Experimenting with Sun Dyes

I had a play date with a couple of friends. We had all bought some Sun Dye paints from Lisa Walton so we had a day of experimenting.

Helen had a little bit of some thicker paint that I used to print leaves by painting onto the leaves and then pressing on to the fabric. Some worked better than others. Sun Dye is too liquid for this technique and perhaps I should have let it all dry before adding the wash over the top!

I loved this effect. This was the wipe up cloth after the one above, plus a little bit more colour to cover and then scattered with Epsom Salts and left in the sun.

This was just a doodle to see how much control I could have over the Sun Dye paint. Not a lot.

This was meant to be a sun print, the reason I bought the Sun Dye paint in the first place! I carefully arranged a load of different leaves on the painted fabric but nothing happened. Helen had the same problem. Then she said, "Do you think that doing it on a glass table is maybe not a good idea?" Duh! Then I had a double duh moment when I realised that I put the painted side down and put the leaves on the back of my fabric! Oh well, I'll just have to have another play.

I was very pleased with this sample though. This was another technique that I had been wanting to try, spraying paint through a stencil. The liquid nature of the Sun Dye paint seemed ideal for it. This is one of the Helen's stencils that she bought from Lisa. It's quite small so I had to be careful to only spray the middle to avoid getting a straight line from the edge but as you can see, the pattern seemed to merge into one cohesive whole. I also turned the stencil over and blotted off the excess paint onto the fabric so I've got positive and negative images. I only had one spray bottle and used three different colours but I think this would be easier if you had several bottles and could add more of any colour as you go. You also need to work quickly as the paint drys to a thin plastic film which clogs the nozzle. A great effect and well work the effort!

So I had another play. It was a lovely still day yesterday but I was too busy. Today was a little bit windy but very sunny. This time I lined the table with cardboard and a sheet of plastic and although I was worried that the fold in the cardboard might show through, the results were good.

 I painted this length in about three sections to try to get the leaves on to wet paint. Some of them stuck to the paint but I put pebbles on top just to be sure they didn't fly away.

 I scattered these little skinny leaves over when I had finished and the fabric felt dry already, I didn't think it would work but they look great. They give a real feeling of depth to the print, like little fishes swimming under the lily pads!

Thread bowl

Remember this?

It became a little bowl.

Made by placing several strands of embroidery cotton floss between two layers of water soluable stabiliser and free motion stitching over the whole thing. The top photo shows how little stitching I did to get this quite sturdy bowl. I think a little less embroidery floss and more stitching would be better. Then I took a polystyrene ball, chopped the bottom off it and covered it in plastic wrap. Washed out the stabiliser and shaped around the ball with a little bit of Mod Podge and left to dry.

It looks like the wigs my Mum made for a fancy dress party my brothers went to in the mid '60s. Guess who they went as? Hint, it was my two brothers and two friends. :)

I have ideas for this technique which I hope to fulfill in the holidays. Only two weeks to go...